Ethics and Conscious / Accessible and Open

I’ve been impressed lately with the recommendations that come from Medium’s recognition engine. Specifically I have been thinking along a few themes that interest me right now.

Ethics and Conscious

How I Fully Quit Google (And You Can, Too): My enlightening quest to break free of a tech giant

“One of the biggest challenges to quitting is the fact that most alternatives, particularly those in the open source of privacy space, are really not user friendly.”

Nithin Coca

“Remember, the fact that so many of Google’s services are free (not to mention those of its competitors including Facebook) is because they are actively monetizing our data. For alternatives to survive without this level of data monetization, they have to charge us. I am willing to pay to protect my privacy, but do understand that not everyone is able to make this choice.”

Confessions of a U.S. Postal Worker: “We deliver Amazon packages until we drop dead.”

“There are people who work months in a row without a day off, especially around the holidays, with literally no day off.”

How to Resist Amazon Prime

“If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it make a noise? If it’s just one click, can we forget the impact it has?”

Accessible and Open

What Would More Democratic A.I. Look Like?

“This shift toward “democratic A.I.” has three main principles: that all society will be impacted by A.I. and therefore its creators have a responsibility to build open, fair, and explainable A.I. services; that A.I. should be used for social benefit and not just for private profit; and that because A.I. learns from vast quantities of data, the citizens who create that data — about their shopping habits, health records, or transport needs — have a right to say and understand how it is used.”

Object Detection with 10 lines of code

“There are millions of expert computer programmers and software developers that want to integrate and create new products that uses object detection. But this technology is kept out of their reach due to the extra and complicated path to understanding and making practical use of it.”